Askellonin Synnit

Sins of the past shall be the Doom of us all

The Wanderer

Who is he?

12

OCT/16

In the small town of Marik’s Bay, a stranger helped those good people evacuate on the first day of the mists. They knew him not, nor did he know them, but he helped them out of simple human decency. He knew what being lost meant, and did not wish them to suffer from that fate. The refugees fled the mists to the ports of hive Aventin. When they wanted to thank their helper, he had already vanished.

On the second day after the mists had appeared, and the sky had turned purple, a man came from the mists and helped the Machar family rebuild the small family shrine, giving them hope in these dark times. They offered him dinner as thanks, which he took, gratefully. They also offered him sanctuary, but he refused, instead walking back into the mist. While the Machars did not know it, the rebuilt shrine warded off a being that would have fed on them, had it not been there.

When the dreadful third day arrived, the crew of Sanctus Dominus, a small PDF vessel, were marooned at sea, their equipment frozen, with no idea where they were. Had the stranger not appeared, and told them how to get their way to the Iron Isles on foot, they would have been lost forever to the mists, and the horrors within. And again, once the ship’s crew saw the Iron Isles appear from the mist, the stranger had disappeared.

The mists had slightly receded on the fourth day, when the stranger appeared inside the ruined warmachine, finding his way into the structures blocked off from the outside world by the damage to the vessel. He helped even those within, as he saw even in them the spark of decency. And in these times, a spark might be just enough. He managed to clear some rubble, and a few of the soldiers managed to get through – before the rest of the rubble collapsed downwards, crushing those that had been hopefully waiting just behind the few who had managed to get through. The wanderer stated “That is all that I can do”, and dissappeared into the mist again, leaving the few astonished mercenaries behind.

A curious thing happened on the fifth day. The mists receded fully from one of the islands on the Iron Isles, and a flurry of activity followed. Of terror. Of death. There was one man the wanderer saved that day, a soldier who was about to be brutally murdered by something he did not understand. He told the soldier the route to back to his master, and the soldier followed that path. His would be murderer was confused for a moment regarding the disappearance of her prey, but she concluded that the horrors of that place must have got the soldier before she could enact punishment, punishment that the wanderer thought was unjust. There were just targets for that blade elsewhere.

The wanderer was left to witness the events that followed. And the people that went through them. For now, he just watched, unseen by the people that did not need him. Unseen by the horrors. Unseen even by Her.